


Graduation Blues

by biggestbaddestwolf



Category: South Park
Genre: Alcoholism, High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-12-05 02:42:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/717935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggestbaddestwolf/pseuds/biggestbaddestwolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stan and Kyle immediately after their high school graduation. A ficlet for a friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Graduation Blues

As Kyle walks past, Kenny and Token gesture underneath the bleachers knowingly. They’ve both already shed their graduation robes, but Kyle’s still wearing his whole getup, his cap pressed into the curly mass on top of his head. It’s going to leave a weird crop-circle like affect, he thinks, but in reverse. He snatches it off his head and undoes the velcro of his robe. Underneath his dress clothes- light gray slacks and a button-up white shirt, are still neat and clean.  
  
Stan is just where everyone said he would be, just where Kyle knew he would be. Kyle cringes at the sight of the graduating quarterback; flopped under the bleachers like a ragdoll, his robe bunched up behind his head like a pillow. His cap makes a small bed for the small bottle he’d carried with him during the entire ceremony. He’d worn dark-asphalt colored trousers and a burgundy polo.  
  
Kyle would note that Stan was drunk, but, well, Kyle was pretty sure Stan had been drunk at the start of the ceremony.  
  
Stan doesn’t look up from his dazed misery until Kyle bends down to sit next to him. Then, his head shoots up a little faster than his brain can process- Kyle can see the moment it takes his eyes to focus and it twists at his stomach. “Hey dude. Great speech.”  
  
“You were listening?” Kyle grimaced.  
  
“Of course I was,” Stan snorted. “And you’ve been working on it for weeks- if I hadn’t listened I would have known it by heart anyway.” Stan had long ago gotten the slurring of words under control. It was, technically speaking, an achievement of sorts. “Wendy looked so mad she had to share the stage with you.” He snickers.  
  
Kyle doesn’t laugh back. He should go with his family, he thinks, and he’s angry at Stan that he even needs to think that. Stan should be with his own family, or should be with Kyle’s- or, better yet, both their families should be standing together in the front of the school, congratulating them both on surviving until eighteen. Congratulating Stan on that football scholarship, or Kyle on his academic ones.  
  
Kyle shouldn’t have to choose between his family and sitting here with Stan, but for some reason he is, and he will, and he’ll keep making that choice if Stan keeps making him. And in the moment that he should be glowing under the weight of his own acheivements, he’s angry. “Why did you fuck off, man? After the ceremony?”  
  
“It’s a Marsh family tradition,” Stan explains with a piss poor excuse for a smile on his face.  
  
The same excuse that he’d been using since freshman year. Every screw up, every lousy moment of give up and crawl in a bottle, was excused with ‘Marsh family Tradition.’ Repeating the cycle. Being his father.  
  
Kyle’s sick of it. Wants to scream instead of leaning forward and kissing Stan’s forehead, which is what he does.  
  
“Fuck tradition man. Fuck it.”


End file.
